


Red Right Hand

by stardropdream



Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Character Study, Episode Related, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-09
Updated: 2015-01-09
Packaged: 2018-03-06 19:02:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3145118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stardropdream/pseuds/stardropdream
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She was born to be queen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Red Right Hand

**Author's Note:**

  * For [songdances](https://archiveofourown.org/users/songdances/gifts).



> Birthday gift fic for the lovely Ana, who is a delight in all things and deserves much better than this fic (I had such plans!1 I cry to the heavens), and posted a little early since work & musketeers ep tomorrow ehehe. Happy birthday, bb!

**I.**  
The day she is born, her life is already set for her. Set firmly in stone.

She is born a princess ready to be made a queen. There is no girl and there is no woman, not with her. She is merely the extension of her husband, something to be molded and shaped to something satisfactory. She has much to learn, she’s often told, much to understand and much to take in. 

She understands this much. She has always known it to be true and there is no room to question it. She is young and she is naïve, and she is to be queen. The moments when she feels herself shaking apart, she needs merely to remember who she is and remember that she is doing her duty. 

There is no room for error. 

Often she runs her body to cold sweats, exhaustion surging in her body like a low thrum. She cannot give into her own temptations because she is nothing but an extension. Her back is rigid. Her eyes sweep down in a demure glance. Her hands are folded, always folded. She is but one thing: a queen, a wife. Property. No matter how much it aches, no matter how much she rubs her hands together, her legs together, her breath stilting for air – no matter how often she does these things, her body is not hers. 

Her body belongs to Spain. Soon, it will belong to France. 

She is fourteen when she is married to her husband – they are both merely children, so unsure of everything. The country is foreign to her. The court is foreign to her. Her husband is foreign to her. All around her, there is a buzz of words she does not quite catch, does not fully recognize. She is too heavily accented to be properly understood, in the rare moments when she is actually asked to speak. She keeps her eyes down. She keeps her vision clear, refuses outright to cry. 

Despite all preparations for this moment, she is uncertain about everything. Anything. Her stomach is a firm stone lodged inside of her, a body that is not hers, and her shame and uncertainty spills over and out of her. She does not understand French as well as she believed she would, and she hates that she shunned the tutor now. Her smile is demure, but her eyes are too sharp and she can see displeasure in her husband’s face before he even processes it himself. 

(Years later, she will still find herself surprised when he rushes to her, when he smiles at her, when his eyes fill with tears at the thought of her being in pain, of being away from him – years later, she will still find herself startled that he should reach for her hands and hold them tight, kiss her knuckles, as if he is some grand lover.) 

The entire affair of their marriage is stilted, painful, and over far too quickly, their marital bed surrounded by the council and the higher members of the court. Her body is stiff and cold beneath him, on edge and uncertain what she should be – feeling ill-prepared for this and unable to voice anything beyond a breathless gasp of pain. 

He moves above her, his hips stuttering twice, before he slumps forward a little bit, his hair stuck to his forehead, his teeth chewing on his bottom lip. His eyes are sunken, wide and uncertain as she is, and there’s a mark from a pimple on his temple she can see now that she’s close enough. 

“Well this was all terrible, wasn’t it?” he whispers to her after the deed is done, after the space between her legs aches and she wonders if it is enough that she should be queen now, she should be pregnant with the heir – for that is her job, that is her duty, that is all she is needed for. 

(Years later, and she’ll have shaped him into something better, to stroke his hands down her first, to wait until she’s relaxed before he moves with more purpose – years later, and she’ll instruct him on how to better impregnate her, as if it will make a difference.) 

Still, she isn’t sure what to say to the words, processing them for a long time as she translates French into Spanish, looking up at her king, her husband, still a mere boy as she is – and she thinks that perhaps he is laughing at her, or laughing at the situation. She does not know how to react, and her reaction is slow.

She merely manages a smile, shaky at first, uncertain beneath him. 

“You needn’t be so hard on yourself, Sire,” she says, because it seems the correct thing to say. “I feel much more at ease now.”

She watches as he preens. 

She feels as if she is suffocating. 

 

**II.**  
“You write to the Spanish king far too often,” Rochefort says and she startles at the sudden Spanish language that hits her ears – so sudden that she almost mistakes it for something else entirely, doesn’t recognize it for her own native tongue, far too used to the lilt and cadence of French to understand when the gentle melody of her homeland touches at the corners of her ears. She is hit with a sudden, sure ache of the land she’ll never see or know again as anything other than a visitor. 

She turns to look at him, though, frowning in utter confusion. He is not so much older than she is, but still he seems far more knowledgeable of French court, something that no years of training and tutoring in Spain could prepare her for. 

“Certainly it is not a crime to write to my brother,” she insists. 

“It is when you brother is the king of Spain,” he returns easily, and sits down across from her. “I’m merely looking out for you.”

She discreetly folds the papers of her letter, so that he cannot read the words she’s written out for him. She knows better than to trust anyone here. She knows better than to believe she is welcomed, believe she is loved or understood or wanted. She is merely needed for an heir and nothing more. Her ladies in waiting seem to despise her more than anything, her husband is still far too young to understand the weight of having a wife, and she is completely and utterly alone. 

The letters home – home, she still calls it, when it cannot be home again – are repentant and fluttering. Descriptions of her life, her longing for home. She knows better than to cry, to stain the letters, to puff up her eyes – and so it’s only her hand that shakes, only the code in which she speaks that betrays her unhappiness. Her face is pristine. She is pristine. 

(Years later, and France will be her home – but that is not for many years yet.) 

She has no right to complain. She is fulfilling her duty. 

Still.

“You still have much left to learn… Your Majesty,” Rochefort says, his voice light but she can note the touch of criticalness to it. Still, she is grateful for his insight because, as off as she might feel, he is able to guide her along again when she feels she is losing her way. In so many ways, she still feels far too young even if she was expected of this since the age of five. 

She merely bows her head, folds up her papers again and sets them inside of her desk, locking the little drawer with the smallest twist of her wrist. It is a simple gesture, but a decisive one – no more letters for today, but she will dispose of them in her own time. If he makes comment, silent or otherwise, she does not lift her eyes to determine it.

In her own way, casting her eyes down is an act of her own defiance. She does not meet the eyes of those who should judge her. 

(Years later, and she knows that it isn’t that she misses her brother or her family – she misses that security. Years later, and she will find that security again in her son: her place in the court solidified as long as he lives and breathes, and while she will never feel one shred of resentment to her young child, part of her will always hate the court for making it so – that she should not be secure until there is an heir.) 

There are little lessons every day, and she learns them steadily. She learns how to move at her husband’s side, knows exactly when to look up and reach for his proffered hand. She knows exactly when to voice her opinion, exactly when to press her lips shut and say nothing. She learns exactly when to say one or two words that will sway her husband utterly. 

At the heart of it, he is pampered and she is neglected. In such a way, she is forced to grow and she is forced to change, to find ways to adapt, to find ways to thicken her skin and survive. He is still a child and continues to be a child regardless of their physical growth. He is pampered. He is sheltered. She, too, understands what it is to be cosseted – but at least she knows that she is caged. 

 

**III.**  
She falls pregnant and the sudden, crushing happiness takes her by surprise. She’d worried she would resent it, that she should hate to be touched like this, to be viewed not as an expectant mother but as the carrier of the future king of France. And that is all. 

Instead, the joy is her own – something that no one else can share, something that no one else could possibly know but she. 

No one else understands the little life inside of her, not as she does. She is sixteen and afraid and alone for so long, but no longer. There is a child growing inside of her and she spends many afternoons bathing in the sunlight from her window, hands pressed to her belly in expectant happiness. It feels less and less like a death sentence to be here and more like anticipation – that she should have someone born from her, someone of her own blood. Someone who wouldn’t just need her, but want her and love her. 

She envisions the life her child will lead. A great king. A sturdy, wonderful king. One who treats his future wife with kindness and, perhaps, even love. A king who believes in the goodness of man, believes in helping his people, believes that all men are worthy of their voice and their own desires. A worthy king who would not shun away those who would seek his mercy. 

She wonders if it’s truly possible to overflow with happiness, to fill up entirely to the brim and just burst from it. She wonders if it’s possible to not have any room left to feel anything other than happiness. Every moment of every day is breathless anticipation. Not just because she has done what she was meant to – but because the child is _hers_. She wonders if every mother must feel this way. 

Her hands shake as she watches herself grow, watches her child grow, feels him kicking. Her palms pressed to her stomach, she feels his strength and his determination. And her eyes brim with happy tears – the first time in years that her tears have been from happiness. 

No, this is certainly happiness. 

 

**IV.**  
She tells herself not to look at him. 

She tells herself not to want him. 

She can feel his eyes on her, every time he is before the court. She is careful, mindful, not to ever look in his direction. Her husband receives all her attention. Her ladies receive attention elsewhere, when her husband is not present, or when it becomes too strange for her to stare only at him for minutes at a time, unrelenting and unblinking. Her eyes are always downcast, or looking out over her people across the court. 

But never at him. Never. 

She cannot afford to see him, cannot afford to want him – cannot allow herself to desire, to dream of him, to think of him whenever her mind wanders. And yet she does and there is nothing that she can do, nothing that she can attempt can cease the pounding of her heart, the way her eyes flit back to his every so often, if only to see him when he’s not looking back at her.

But he always is. 

The first months of her pregnancy, she is all agitation and fear. She believes with her entire being that this baby will be healthy, he will be born strong and beautiful and _hers_ , but the fears creep in whenever she does not feel him kick, whenever there is a strange kind of stillness inside of her. She knows that her own agitation, her own fear, her own longing cannot be good for her son. She tries to relax, she tries to find happiness, she tries to not feel this tension growing higher and higher inside of her. 

She is regal. She is confident.

(“Your son, Sire,” she will say months later, as her husband peers down at the face of a child she believes to not be his – and she’ll feel no sense of irony and no sense of deception in saying so. Yes, this child is _his_ from necessity, for there is a man who can never truly have him – and that is a life she can never truly have, a life she absolutely refuses to entertain, for fear of growing sick with longing.) 

She does not let herself look at him – because looking, wanting, is too much. She knows it cannot happen again, that it will not happen again no matter how much she may think of it, how much she may wish for it. 

She is breathless with wanting. The child inside of her kicks, and she closes her eyes – focuses entirely on that.

She cannot look at him. She cannot want him. That time is over, but the evidence kicks inside of her – and while she cannot have him, she can, at least, have their child. She can, at least, remember him as he is – beautiful and wild, broken and incomplete.

(Months later, and she still remembers the way he moved over her, the way he cried as if the world were crashing down around him, the way his hands shook when he touched her – the way she’d reached out to hold him, the way their foreheads pressed together. Months later, and she cannot forget it.) 

She hopes that he does not hate her for this. She hopes that someday he’ll stop looking – knows they must be discreet – and yet a small part of her curls up in a painful warmth whenever she feels his eyes on her. 

She is still so young in so many ways. In some ways, she still feels just as she did at fourteen – alone and uncertain. 

She cannot want him. 

 

**V.**  
She holds her son in her arms, looks down at his face and he blinks back up at her. 

And she knows, completely, what happiness is. She cannot regret a single moment that led her to having this child in her arms.


End file.
